Remember the time when you feel awestruck with how advance technology in sci-fi films are? You know they are fictional but you always look at flying cars or robotic arms, wishing they can be real. Now, thanks to 3D printing technology, you can create items you only see in movies.

3D printing enables a person to build or print any design into a three dimensional object that can be both functional and stylish.

Since its creation in 1980’s, there are now plenty of 3D printers available in the market and because of this, more and more people can create innovations that improve the state of different industries. 3D printing has come a long way, here are four times it revolutionized life:

Food

3D technology don’t just produce items out of plastic. It can also carve sugar based food, and chocolate that changes the way sweets are manufactured. Now, candies and chocolate bars can be beautifully shaped to more than balls and bars. Imagine eating candies with detailed shape of cute animals or flowers.

Cooking wares and machines are also made with this technology. For example, 3D Printed Thermal Oven, like Pyra, enables chef to cook with precision. While, utensils can be more ergonomic and stylish because of this breakthrough.

Environment

Various industries produce tons of plastic wastes that pollute the ocean and the land. Even 3D printers is set to produce 250 million pounds of plastic by 2020. Thankfully, an invention has set 3D printing as environmental alternative to many business production.

Enter Dimension Polymers, a company that produced certified 3D printing filaments made from 95% recycled plastic. What it does is clean plastic products, sort them out and melt them to produce filaments. With Dimension Polymers, you can endlessly produce 3D materials and save the environment by eliminating tons of plastic wastes.

Fashion

There are plenty of products you can make from 3D technology. It can even be used in fashion, a billion dollar industry patronized by people around the globe.

Danit Peleg of Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Israel showcased fashion pieces made from 3D technology. The clothes, modular with triangular patterns, are modern and edgy. It gives a whole new meaning to fashion, which is often limited to fabrics and leather. Aside from the waste cloth saved by this fashion innovation, it also gives fashion designers infinite styles for different purposes, whether shoes, dresses, bags, or accessories.

Medicine

3D printing also modernized the medical and dental industry. Cheaper prosthetics for better mobility can now be given to both human and animals. It can save lives as well, like when surgeons from St Thomas Hospital in London made an exact copy of the heart of two-year old Mina Khan, to precisely operate her heart disease.

In Gaza, 3D printers provide humanitarian aids low cost medical supplies that are equally useful but easier to transport. Think how much lives can be saved with this technology.

There are infinite possibilities to 3D printing technology. The list above is some of the industries it changed.

Because of the cheap printers available in the market, it is not surprising if one day, we will live in a world full of 3D printed cars, or 3D printed robots- just like in movies.